In recent years, a large number of escalators having high lift ranges have been installed in subway stations, etc. In escalators of this kind, passengers must stand still on the steps for a long time, and many passengers feel uncomfortable. Because of this, escalators that operate at high speeds have been developed, but there is an upper limit to the operating speeds thereof for passengers to get on and off safely.
In answer to this, high-speed inclined portion escalators have been proposed in which it is possible for the amount of time spent riding the escalator to be shortened by operating at low speed at upper and lower landing portions where the passengers get on and off, operating to accelerate and decelerate in an upper curved portion and a lower curved portion, and operating at high speed in the intermediate inclined portion. A high-speed inclined portion escalator of this kind is disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. SHO 51-116586 (Gazette), for example.
However, since the conventional high-speed inclined portion escalator merely performs acceleration and deceleration from low-speed operation to high-speed operation, or from high-speed operation to low-speed operation, a large acceleration such as that shown in FIG. 10 (deceleration in the figure), for example, arises in the steps in the speed-changing regions, and there is a risk that passengers riding the steps will be subjected to discomfort.